Wednesday, November 3, 2010

I hope you all got lots of good candy from trick or treating! We had a small Halloween party in the regional capital of Atakpame to welcome in a new group of volunteers and we even had American candy. My costume was a police officer, but sadly, people in Togo don’t celebrate Halloween, so they all thought that we were a bit crazy. In terms of celebrations here, I recently went to a big festival in a city called Notse (see if you can find it on a map!). The festival is called Agbogboza and it means “The feast of knocking down the wall”. The feast has been going on ever since 1721 when the people of Notse knocked down the wall surrounding the city and escaped from their evil king. The festival had chiefs and villagers from all over Togo, Ghana, and Benin, so it was a really cool experience. There was traditional African dancing and music, and of course a lot of good food.

I hope you are all staying warm as winter gets closer. Here, it is about to get a lot hotter. The rainy season is ending, and sometimes, the rain and clouds are the only things that can cool down the sun. It will get progressively hotter until February when everyone says it is almost unbearable because it’s so hot and humid, but eventually the rains will return and it will cool back down. Either way, I won’t be needing jackets and sweatshirts like you guys for a long time – sometimes, I go into an air-conditioned office or car that has the temperature at 80 degrees and I think that its cold!

Well that’s all the time that I have right now. I’m about to leave to go to a kids club to play games, sing songs, and teach people how to avoid mosquito bites!